


great expectations

by plantmajor



Category: Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Character Study, Emotional Hurt, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Time Skips
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-01-21
Packaged: 2019-10-14 01:56:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17499386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plantmajor/pseuds/plantmajor
Summary: Spiderman didn’t have to take tests or quizzes, he wore a suit, he could do super cool flips, he saved lives, and he could do everything Peter Parker could or couldn’t do. Spiderman didn’t go to highschool.  He was more confident, saved lives, didn’t have to take tests or do homework or finish projects. Spiderman had expectations on him too, but his freedom made it worth it.Spiderman had a freedom Peter Parker could never touch.





	great expectations

Peter gets the first gold sticker of his kindergarten class in September. He gets it for answering a question about shapes that no one else got, and his mom ruffles his hair and his dad serves him an extra scoop of ice cream after dinner.

He knows what smart means but he thought it could only be used about adults. It’s not until then that he realized that kids could be smart too.

He likes this feeling. He wants more stars.

 

* * *

 

Kyle was two years older than Peter and sometimes let him sit on his bed while Kyle’s mom and May had dinner in the other room. They were family friends, and that’s it, Kyle would remind him. But Kyle let him play _Mario Party_ on his 3DS so Peter didn’t really care what their relationship was like.

“I remember when I was in second grade,” Kyle had said once, while Peter sat on his bed, playing _Memory Match_ because Peter was pretty good at _Memory Match_. “It was super easy.”

“It’s not that easy.” Peter huffs, not bothering to look up from his game.. “ My class is doing fractions, too. That’s third grader stuff.”

“Yeah, but fourth grader stuff is the hardest. ‘Specially if you get in the Blue Group like me.”

Now this gets Peter’s attention. He pauses his game and sits up.  “The Blue Group? What does that mean?”

Kyle, who was obviously just fishing for more additions to his ego, smirks. “It’s for the smart kids, like me. At least that’s what everybody says.”

“I’ll get in the Blue Group too!” Peter says, sitting up even taller. “My teacher says I’m ahead of my reading level.”

“Nah. You? Baby Parker?”

“I’m not a baby anymore. I’m eight!”

“Call me when you’re ten.”

“You don’t even have a phone!” Peter says, but Kyle’s mom and May are already opening up the door to his bedroom to tell them it’s time to say goodbye.

 

* * *

  
With great power comes great responsibility.

With great power comes great expectations.

With great power comes great consequences.

Ben only says the first one, but Peter hears the other ones too.

 

* * *

 

In November, his first grade teacher puts up a star chart with everyone’s name labeled neatly. Peter has the lead by next Friday with six stars while Flash Thompson has the second best with four.

He calls Peter a loser for having so many and gets demoted down to three. This makes Flash even more mad at him, so Peter stays behind while everyone else goes to recess and picks one of his stars off and gives it to Flash.

Now they both have four. Peter doesn’t really care about stars that much anymore.

 

* * *

 

 

People won’t stop asking him for help with homework. He likes it at first, and he wants to help as many people as he can, so he gives them all answers.

Peter likes when everyone marks their questions right and then pat him on the shoulder or smile at him.

What he doesn’t like, though, is on the rare occasion he gets something wrong, and everyone gives him a dirty look and don’t bother talking to him at lunch anymore.

He knows what dumb means and he knows that one question wrong doesn't mean that he is dumb, but it makes him feel like he’s letting everyone down. He doesn’t like that feeling.

 

* * *

 

He’s an Avenger, now. He’s an Avenger.

Tony Stark just told him he was an Avenger.

He made it. This is it. This should be when all the anxiety and bad feeling should disappear, but they don’t. Instead, for some reason, his sense raise from a nine to a ten.

Peter learns what the word proud means when he’s seven. He’s heard people say it before, and he could kinda gather what it meant from context clues, but he gets the actual definition when he’s looking through a dictionary looking for smart sounding words for a project.

It means feeling deep pleasure or satisfaction. It means being happy with yourself. It means he does good things and he does them well.

That words sticks him through the years.

Ben says he’s proud when he gets the highest grade in Chemistry.

May says she’s proud when he gets a ribbon for marching band.

His teachers say they’re proud when he gets a good mark on a project.

The Academic team says that they’re proud when he gets the winning answer at the Semi Finals.

Mr. Stark says he’s proud when he puts an arm around Peter’s shoulders and asks him to join the Avengers.

 _I’m proud of you_ can mean something else though. It can mean last words and false hope and unearned confidence and insecurity and too high expectations.

But when he’s seven, Peter doesn’t know any of that yet. He just knows what the word means now, so he nods and flips the page and laughs when he sees the word stupid in the dictionary. He’s a kid.

He’ll know soon enough.

 

* * *

  

Peter gets placed in the Blue Group when he gets to fourth grade. The year after that, he’s in the Premiere Class. Those, if he remembers correctly, are the smart people classes.

Kyle moved away when he was in the third grade, though, so Peter can’t tell him.

The first time he fails something he’s in the ninth grade.

He knows he did bad. He can feel it. He’s disgusted. It’s for English and even though he’s normally good there he still takes too much time on the test. He lets time bleed from his English class into his History one so by the time he gets there he feels like crying and he’s already missed part of the class.

Ned doesn’t say much. Just pats his shoulder and makes a joke. Peter replies-- half-assedly, but still replies all the same-- and lets himself smile.

When he gets the 62 back, he barely flinches. He just stares at it and goes into Extra Help after class ends. He’s scaringly numb.

He doesn’t say anything to May. He says something to Ben, but he barely listens to the answer. He’ll do better next time.

He _has_ to do better next time.

 

* * *

 

 

Peter wins a contest at his school for two tickets to the first Stark Expo in _years_ and comes back home with the biggest smile on his face that make Ben and May hesitate because it’s been so long since they’ve seen him like this.

“I won,” he says. “I won! I won! I won!”

He and Ben go hand in hand. Ben buys him an Iron Man mask and gauntlets and takes pictures of him next to everything and puts him on his shoulders so Peter can see Tony Stark  speaking, live, in front of him. It’s so exciting Peter feels like he’s going to cry.

He feels like he’s about to burst into tears of joy when Iron Man tells him Nice job, kid. Because that means he helped Iron Man and he was a hero too.

Ben yells at him a little for running away but Peter doesn’t care.

 

* * *

 

 

When he’s Spiderman, he feels on top of the world.

Peter Parker had test anxiety, a squeaky voice, blotchy skin. He was insecure, had one real friend and he was on the Academic Decathlon team and he got mad at himself for scoring below an 85 and he played clarinet and he had three essays due next week and a Spanish quiz tomorrow.

Spiderman didn’t have to take tests or quizzes, he wore a suit, he could do super cool flips, he saved lives, and he could do everything Peter Parker could or couldn’t do. Spiderman didn’t go to highschool.  He was more confident, saved lives, didn’t have to take tests or do homework or finish projects. Spiderman had expectations on him too, but his freedom made it worth it.

Spiderman had a freedom Peter Parker could never touch.

 

* * *

 

“ _Peter, you don’t need to study, you’re like the smartest guy I know._ ”

Liz telling him that while in a bathing suit and showing how much she cares about all of them makes a bubbly feeling erupt in him. _That_ he could get used too.

His mother used to say that he was the smartest kid in his class and that she was so, so proud of him. She would smile at his test scores and kiss him on the cheek. His dad would hug him after parent-teacher conferences and smuggle some candy to him before dinner.

Peter figures that’s how it begins. How he prides himself in his intelligence and builds himself up on it so much that when he fails even the smallest thing it’s like he’ll never breathe again.

He feels guilty for feeling bad, because he feels like he’s the one who created these expectations in the first place. He’s the one who got an 100 on the Geometry regents in the eighth grade, and he’s the one who won robotics contest and told everyone who would listen when he was 7 that all he wanted to be was Tony Stark when he grew up.

The face May gets when he succeeds makes him beam but also makes his stomach twist and turn with a sense of foreboding. The face she gets when he fails makes him feel even worse.

He hates both faces, because one means he succeeded and the other means he failed at succeeding.

 

* * *

 

The word Peter has five letters.

Like _smart_ , _grade_ , _atom_ , _armor_ , _award, movie,_ and  _power._

Like _proud_. His least favorite word, at this point.

 

* * *

 

 

 

“ _I’m nothing without this suit,_ ” He says, because it’s true.

What does he have other than this suit?

A voice in the back of his head says, “You’re smart.” But is he really?

Would somebody smart be get his suit taken away like he’s a child? Would somebody smart skip school so much?

Maybe he’s smart, but his grades and experiences don’t reflect that, so what is he, really?

He’s nothing.

 

* * *

 

The clearest memory he has of his parents is one when they go to the Bronx Zoo for his dad’s birthday, and since it’s the middle of spring they can do anything they want to.

Peter drags his parents to the monkeys, the giraffes, the lions, the birds, and the spiders. Then they go to the kid’s center and he crudely colors in the pictures they have set out for him and he answers all the questions the tour guide asks perfectly later on.

When they get back home, his dad says that maybe he should become a zoologist, with how much he knows about animals. Peter doesn’t know exactly what a zoologist is, but since it’s something to do with animals he smiles and nods.

His mom laughs and says Peter is smart enough to do anything he ever wants to do. Even then, at five, Peter does not quite believe her.

 

* * *

 

Dust makes him sneeze.

It also makes him itch a lot, and even though it’s normal for a lot of people he once got hives after hanging out in Ned’s attic for twenty minutes and then he had to spend fifteen minutes getting calamine lotion rubbed on his shoulders and neck and chest by May. It was kinda embarrassing.

This dust, though, doesn't make him sneeze, but it does make him itch. But not the type of itch that can be solved with baby powder and ice packs. It’s an itch that makes his head ache and his lungs seize and his heart skip a beat.

It’s this itch that makes him freeze when he watches the aliens and the Footloose guy and the doctor disappear one by one.

 _Watch out, watch out, watch out._ The itch says. _Watchoutwatchoutwatchoutwatchout._

He didn’t expect death like this. Not that he’d thought about it before (he had, of course he had), but he expected it to be more bloody and dangerous and climactic. And yet, he couldn’t have imagined it any other way.

Wait, he didn’t turn in his Spanish project, or his worksheet that they had to fill out for the MoMa trip. He hadn’t gotten the package he was waiting on from Amazon for Ned’s birthday, or the grade he got on his History midterm.

Proud means satisfaction and achieving expectations. He imagined his death with feeling this burst of pride, like he’d done good things and done them well. He wanted a proud look in the eyes of his friends and family as he perished but all he see is despair.

He wanted to feel _proud_ , finally, in a way that didn’t make him feel like something bad was going to go down.

For the millionth time in his life, as he crumbles in Tony Stark’s arm, Peter feels anything but.

  


**Author's Note:**

> i like to project my insecurities on everyone around me :p  
> yell at me on tumblr @plantmajor h
> 
> (also for those of you who don't know the regents are tests we have to take in new york and they suck hahahahaha happy regents week!!)


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